BERKELEY – Alan Dundes, a
popular and award-winning University of California, Berkeley,
professor of anthropology and folklore who earned an international
reputation for his Freudian deconstruction of everything from
fairy tales to football to the Book of Genesis, died Wednesday
(March 30). He was 70.

Alan Dundes (Deborah Stalford photo)

Dundes collapsed Wednesday afternoon at Giannini Hall on campus
while teaching a graduate seminar on folklore theory and techniques.
Students called 911, and he was rushed to Alta Bates-Summit Medical
Center in Berkeley, where officials said he was pronounced dead
upon arrival of an apparent heart attack.

"To call Alan Dundes a giant in his field is a great understatement,"
said George Breslauer, a professor of political science and dean
of the Division of Social Sciences in UC Berkeley's College of
Letters & Science. "He virtually constructed the field
of modern folklore studies and trained many of its most distinguished
scholars. Anyone who has ever taken a class with Alan Dundes knows
that it was an unforgettable experience."

Simon Bronner, Distinguished University Professor of American
Studies and Folklore at Pennsylvania State University in Harrisburg
and editor of the Encyclopedia of American Folklife, said Dundes
"will undoubtedly go down in history as one of the most influential
folklorists, indeed one of the most influential minds, the world
has known. That mind had an incredible range, reaching into cultures
around the globe, and all manner of material including literature,
narratives, art, customs, speech and games. His specialty was
not in a single genre, but in the provocative interpretation."

Delighting in what he called "the wit, humor and amazing
creativity" found in folklore, Dundes said most people think
folklore is found only in superstition, ritual, myths and fables.
But he also studied contemporary cartoons, poems, jokes and other
lore passed along from one person to another. In his book, "Never
Try to Teach a Pig to Sing," he and co-author Carl Pagter
analyzed modern folklore including T-shirt slogans, ethnic and
sexual remarks, scatalogical humor, and exchanges distributed
via office photocopy machines.

Dundes began teaching at UC Berkeley in 1963. His knowledge about
cultural studies -- along with his unmistakable wit and charm
-- made him a favorite among students and the media alike. Reporters
knew to call him for help explaining the mystique of the vampire,
the allure of violent sports, holiday traditions and even why
the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492.

In the classroom, Dundes earned a legion of fans among the thousands
of students who took his courses, easily among the most sought
after on campus. Dundes made such an impression that, in 2000,
one of his undergraduate students from the 1960s sent him a check
for $1 million. He used the anonymous gift to establish a UC Berkeley
distinguished professorship in folkloristics.

Dan Melia, a UC Berkeley professor of rhetoric, called Dundes
a "very meticulous scholar" who was "intellectually
and personally generous."

That generosity was remembered by Beverly R. Ortiz, a lecturer
in anthropology at California State University, East Bay, and
a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at UC Berkeley. She met Dundes
in his narrative folklore class during her first semester on campus
in 1993.

"Perhaps Professor Dundes' most important academic legacy
is the time he took to get to know his students as individuals,"
she said. "During office hours, students lined up to speak
with him, and he always had sound, practical advice and a plethora
of citations to share."

Under his guidance, UC Berkeley's anthropology department established
a master's degree in folklore program that houses an archive of
more than 500,000 items relating to folklore.

Dundes became one of the most cited scholars in the world, and
many of the prolific author's writings are required reading for
students in a number of fields, Bronner said.

Dundes is the author of more than 250 scholarly articles and
a dozen books, including "Parsing Through Customs: Essays
by a Freudian Folklorist," "The Vampire: A Casebook,"
"Cracking Jokes," "Holy Writ as Oral Lit: The Bible
as Folklore" and "The Shabbat Elevator and Other Sabbath
Subterfuges: An Unorthodox Study of Circumventing Custom and Jewish
Character."

He co-authored or edited more than 20 books -- tackling subjects
including cockfighting, the evil eye, the relationship between
anxiety and humor, and Cinderella -- and in 1965 edited "The
Study of Folklore" to fill a void of textbooks about folklore.
The book has since gone through 26 printings.

In the past year, the London-based Routledge publishing house
issued "Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies,"
a mini-library about folklore that was edited by Dundes. "Anyone
who reads these four volumes will know what folklore is,"
Dundes recently said. "There's nothing like this. This sort
of stakes out the field."

His last book was "Recollecting Freud: Isidor Sadger."
Dundes edited and introduced what he called a personal and insightful
account by Sadger, one of Freud's earliest students, about the
controversial psychoanalyst.

While Sadger was a devoted follower of Freud, he was considered
more of a participant observer than a member of his inner circle.
Freud and others were critical of Sadger's work, and after Sadger
published his memoir about Freud in 1930, it essentially became
lost.

Dundes learned of the book and searched around the world for
one of the few remaining copies, which he located in a Japanese
research library.

Bronner said Dundes' ideas, "captured in lively publications,
will certainly live on for many generations to come because they
are so incisively far-reaching, but we will miss his sharp wit
and ready humor, the gleam in his eye after hearing a good 'text,'
his distinctive quick-paced vocal delivery and most of all, his
passion for knowledge exuberantly evident wherever he made an
appearance," said Bronner.

In 2002, Dundes delivered a Commencement
Convocation speech to UC Berkeley graduates at the Greek Theatre
that exemplified his gift for rapid delivery as well as for imparting
sage advice and non-stop laughs. At the end of his address, he
fired off a long list of folk wisdom one-liners and a few other
tips including: "For every action, there is an equal and
opposite criticism," "If at first you don't succeed,
destroy all evidence that you tried," and "It may be
that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning
to others."

With characteristic caring, he told students to "take time
to enjoy the present, savor the moment, take pleasure in 'now,'
not worrying yourself to death about tomorrow ... American culture
seems to denigrate and demean the present in a never-ending push
towards a future which may or may not ever materialize."

Dundes was the first folklorist to be elected a member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001 and won the Pitré Prize, an international lifetime achievement award in folklore,
in 1993. He said he was very proud to have won UC Berkeley's Distinguished
Teaching Award in 1994. Dundes was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship
in 1966 and named a senior fellow of the National Endowment for
the Humanities in 1972.

His wife of 48 years, Carolyn, said his hobbies included "work
and more work." He also liked to watch baseball and football
and wanted to live long enough to see the Cal Bears make it back
to the Rose Bowl, she said. Dundes also loved books, she said,
and every nook and cranny in their Berkeley home is filled with
them.

Years ago, he wrote a centennial song for UC Berkeley that was
played at one of the Bears' football games, his wife said. He
wrote pieces for the San Francisco Opera for programs with folklore
themes, such as "Little Red Riding Hood," she added.

A native of New York City and the son of a lawyer and a musician,
Dundes was born in 1934.

Dundes studied music at Yale College but switched to English
after two years. He earned his B.A. in English in 1955, was in
the U.S. Navy for two years and returned to Yale to earn his M.A.
in the teaching of English there in 1958. Carolyn Dundes said
he was drawn to the material in literature and opted instead to
pursue folklore studies. He earned a Ph.D. in folklore at Indiana
University in 1962. He taught English at the University of Kansas
for one year before coming to UC Berkeley's anthropology department.

His wife said he was teaching just one course this spring semester
and planned to teach two classes for the first time during Summer
Sessions. Although he sometimes talked about retiring, she said,
he planned to continue teaching as long as he could.

The Dundes family suggests that memorial contributions be made
to any UC Berkeley library.

Details of a campus memorial event will be announced later.

Survivors include his wife, Carolyn of Berkeley; son, David of
Walnut Creek; daughters, Lauren Dundes Streiff of Owings Mills,
Md., and Alison Dundes Renteln of Altadena, Calif.; and six grandchildren.
Dundes' son is an information technology manager. Dundes Streiff
is a professor of sociology, and Dundes Renteln is a professor
of political science and anthropology.